CROWDS ANGERED

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 136, 11 June 1934, Page 7

CROWDS ANGERED

AGAINST FASCISTS. Several Black Shirt Meetings Disrupted. MOSLEYITES SCATTERED. United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) (Received 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, June 10. Crowds broke up four Black Shirt open-air meetings. The most serious clash occurred at Nottingdale, where the police dispersed the fighters, arresting four. . A crowd in Regent's Park surrounded the speakers, who were forced off the rostrum, and the police rescued them. Black Shirts, attempting an open meeting at Finsbury Park, were threatened and desisted. The police were summoned to-night to Tottenham, where, after a melee, Black Shirts escaped by tram. Letters in the Press, interviews and other protests allege unwarranted brutality by the Fascists at the meeting in the Albert Hall which resulted in disturbances of unprecedented violence. Wonder is expressed that many of those who wete ejected were riot killed. It is stated that men were hurled down flights of stairs and that there were instances of ruthless kicking. Meet Force by Force.

Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd, M.P. (Con., Ladywood, Birmingham), says he saw several cases of a single interrupter attacked by 20 Fascists.

Ministers are joining in the condemnation of dictatorships. Mr. W. OrmsbyGore, First Commissioner of Works, in a speech at Leamington referred to the Fascists' meeting. He said: "It is dangerous nonsense. We cannot have either Sir Oswald Mosley, Sir Stafford Cripps, or any other 'ballyhoo' undoing what it took our people, with a Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights and the abolition of slavery centuries to win."

Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, Colonial Secretary, in an address to members of the Junior Imperial League, said: "Force will be met with force. The majority of our people will never stand for Fascism. The idea is so alien to our character that I do not think our people arc likely to be diverted by any 'circus' of foreign origin aiming at dictatorship, whether black or red."

Sir Oswald Mosley has issued a reply to the Press denying that the Fascists were unnecessarily violent at the meeting. He says the campaign of interruptions was planned weeks ahead. Members of the House of Commons, he alleges, are ready to take advantage of Red violence in order to combat Fascism, which threatens Conservatism more than Socialism.

Sir Oswald asserted that the Fascists' casualties were far more numerous and serious than those of their opponents.